Your Company
 

To Be and to Have(Être et avoir)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

France · 2002
1h 44m
Director Nicolas Philibert
Starring Georges Lopez
Genre Documentary

In this heartwarming documentary set in rural France, patient and passionate school teacher Georges Lopez teaches 12 children, between the ages of 4 and 11, in one classroom. As the school year goes on, we watch Lopez tend to the specific needs of each child, preparing them all for the next step in their lives.

Stream To Be and to Have

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

The interest of To Be and to Have, though, is not sociological: it is not really about the French educational system, rural life or even the way children learn. It is, rather, the portrait of an artist, a man whose work combines discipline and inspiration and unfolds mysteriously and imperceptibly.

80

The New Yorker by David Denby

A deeply satisfying aesthetic and pedagogic experience--though Americans may find themselves wondering how such terrific children can grow into such irritating adults.

88

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Exhibiting the same sort of patience as his sensible hero, Philibert has created an extraordinarily humane portrait of a partnership between one adult and his very fortunate charges.

90

Variety by Lisa Nesselson

Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.

80

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Full of observed life, the movie is also a bit of a vacuum, and once we register our admiration for Lopez, we can hardly help contemplating the cold equations of the students' futures, their uneducated families, and the rapturously desolate farmland around them.

80

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer

The emotional honesty of this movie rescues it from sentimentality. To Be and to Have is about more than a dedicated teacher and his pupils; it’s about how difficult and exhilarating it is to grow into an adult.

100

Boston Globe by Wesley Morris

Nothing momentous happens here, but Philibert has a magical sense of how to find the simple poetry lurking in the universal routine of being a kid. A lot of the film's lyricism is extracurricular.

Users who liked this film also liked